Food ethics: part 1

February 11, 2016

Hi friends! I know things have been particularly quiet over here and I apologize for the silence. It’s been a busy start to the year, and I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on where I need to focus and devote my time. I haven’t felt as compelled to return to this space, but I’m hoping to continue posting whenever inspiration strikes.

This quarter, my classes have inspired me to think about food from various perspectives. Lately, we’ve talked a lot about food ethics– what factors do we consider when making food choices? And how will our personal biases influence the professional dietary recommendations that we make? I’ve reflected on my personal purchasing decisions and have shifted my focus beyond, ‘is it organic and unprocessed’ to ‘where, when, how and who produced what I’m eating.’

In particular, we’ve focused a lot on the ethics of industrial agriculture in the United States. I cannot even begin to scratch the surface of this topic in this post, but I wanted to share some of the information that made me change my consumption habits.

If you take nothing away from this post, at least hear this: we need a major shift in the way we produce food in the United States. ← You’re probably thinking: “well, duh.”

I know that you know that our food system is terribly wrong. Many people know this to be true. But are you doing anything about it? Maybe this isn’t an issue you’re passionate about – totally fine. But if this is an issue that you care about, it’s not fair to remain blissfully ignorant.

Easier said than done, right? The majority of us are so far removed from farming and agriculture that we forget, and choose to forget, where our food comes from and how it’s produced.

The time has come to educate ourselves.

Where to start? Try researching these topics:

The lack of regulation in our food production system.

The horrible conditions that both employees and animals have to endure at CAFO’s (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.)

The enormous environmental impact of eating a factory-farmed meat.

Eating Animals

We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film. We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory – disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.

-Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

Yes, I eat meat.

While Safran Foer is a vegetarian, I am not. But I can say with 100% certainty that I will avoid ← (I wanted to say never, but that seemed like a hard-line to draw)purchasing factory-farmed meat for the rest of my life. The primary motivator for this personal decision is the damage that factory farming causes the environment.

The price we pay for cheap meat

Here’s the thing about price per pound at the grocery store: it doesn’t account for the health and environmental costs of factory farming. Our cheap meat is creating short-term solutions and making long-term problems.

Think about it: it’s simple math. The cheaper that companies can produce meat, the less they can charge for it at the grocery store, while still making a profit. What does that mean?

Cheap feed.The government subsidizes corn that ends up in animal feed.

Wait – cows eat corn?

Yup, factory farmed cows are fed a mostly corn-based diet because corn is a cheap way to fatten them up. But cows needs those lovely blades of grass to stay healthy. Cow are ruminants, which means that their digestive systems are made to digest grass, not corn.

But what happens with cows are fed a starchy diet? A slimy layer forms in the cow’s rumen (their stomach) that traps gas, causing the rumen to expand and press against the animal’s lungs. If the pressure is not relieved, the cow will suffocate.

A high-starch diet also causes a build-up of acid in the rumen, which begins to eat away at the stomach lining. This allows bacteria from the stomach to leach into the bloodstream, causing liver damage.

But we have a solution! (not.)

Antibiotics are administered to minimize liver damage, which introduces a whole new set of problems that I will have to address in another post.

The industrial farming industry has perfected the art of animal ‘husbandry.’ Or in other words, they have calculated exactly how many days a cow can just barely survive on a grain-based diet in order to maximize the number of days they get cheap feed.

Now quickly (because I really need to go to bed), what are the environmental costs to factory farming? According to the USDA, the US meat industry produces 61 MILLION TONS of waste each year. Where does it go?

It goes here:

Lagoons from a CAFO in North Carolina

All of that ↑ is waste. It was captured by a drone in the documentary, Speciesism: The Movie. This sh*t is filled with toxins, gets into our waterways, and is sprayed back onto our crops as ‘fertilizer.’ Don’t believe me? Read more about it here.

You guys, I could go on for ages, but I’ll step off of my soapbox for now. If you’re looking for more information, I’ve highlighted a few books/documentaries below that I highly recommend.

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About Lauren

Lauren Rice, MPH recently graduated from the Coordinated Dietetics Program at the University of Washington. In January 2017, she opened Nutrition Elevated, her anti-diet, #bodypositive nutrition counseling and consulting small business (www.nutrition-elevated.com).

Comments

This is an awesome post. As part of the Whole30, I was encouraged to not purchase factory meat, and look for higher quality, responsibly raised produce. It does cost a lot more, but I feel so much better about who I’m supporting and where my money is going. Looking forward to hear more of your thoughts about this!

Also, I just want to say that you always put forth such high-quality, thought provoking, informative posts, so I don’t mind waiting longer for what you write. I always know that I’ll learn something from it which is way better than getting a post every day with what you’re eating or what gym class you went to. Just wanted to put in my two cents 🙂Be sure to check out Gretchen | Gretchruns’s recent post: Wednesday Reviews : New Running Gadgets and Gear

Thank you so much for your comment, Gretchen! That’s the tough part about our food system – at the end of the day, it comes down to cost and many people don’t have the resources, or don’t want to allocate their resources, towards the more expensive organic or local options. [I also think the onus shouldn’t just fall on the individual and that government needs to step up to help, but that’s another topic for another day 🙂 ]

I really appreciate your feedback! Thank you for making me feel better about being more quiet these days. 🙂

GAhhh I need to get my hands on these books! Do they have audio?! I feel like I could actually get through them in a decent time-frame when commuting. Versus sitting down to read.
I love that you’re sharing this. I do eat meat as well, but also try to eat minimal amounts. The other good thing I have going in my household is that my husband hunts. So most of our meat (besides the occasional chicken purchase) will actually come from him. We’ll buy salmon every once in a while but I always avoid farm-raised.

Unfortunately nothing here truly surprises me. I wish people would try and educate themselves about where their food is coming from. You’re 100% right, it’s not always about organic.

Thank you so much for your comment, Ashley! I haven’t checked, but I’m sure there are audio versions of the books. Omnivore’s Dilemma would be a good one for audio because it’s pretty dense (but super informative!)

I’ve been trying to find a local farm in the Seattle area to buy meat (and possibly split it with some friends!) I can’t even get myself to buy organic meat right now because of everything I’ve read and learned recently.

You need to read Dan Barber’s The Third Plate. It’s basically a more recent rendition of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Barber draws on and quotes Pollan quite a lot. I’m almost done and it’s totally rocking my world in every way possible. It’s a MUST read for anyone interested in learning about agricultural reform.Be sure to check out Emily’s recent post: One Step to Greening Your House

Fantastic post, Lauren! Michael Pollen is high on my list to read. There was a similar article in Outside Magazine (http://www.outsideonline.com/2046606/eating-right-can-save-world) recently that really pushed me to ensure the meat I purchase is organic/local/non-factory farmed. For me, as you touch on in this, it’s as much a health issue as it is an environmental and therefore moral issue. Despite what certain politicians claim, climate change is real and factory farms have a direct impact from this. Ryan and I were watching the Flash (so cheesy) on Netflix the other night and a line from a time traveler really caught my attention: “Cows are extinct in my time.” That’s going to be the reality of our world soon – so thank you for bringing this topic to people’s awareness!

Today in my food class we had a somewhat infuriating discussion about the nutrition discourse in the U.S. — not, per se, the same as what you mentioned above in terms of production and quality (which is obviously lacking in America), but more so the dialogue controlled by the government pertaining to what you should eat based on your size/gender/social class/profession/etc etc etc. This debate I’m sure will pop up later on in a food ethics series, but it is hot on my mind now, as I’ve spent most of the day feeling like the USDA robbed me of taste and pleasure from eating for my first 20 years. It’s not only the food in America that needs to change; it’s how we talk about it and perceive it as a nation. (The easier solution is, of course, to just move to Europe and never come back…)

(I also agree about reading The Third Plate, especially the part about foie gras! Sorry, France bias ;))

This is so unbelievably important! I eat very little meat because I can’t be sure of the source unless I buy it, or go to a place that advertises their source. I do my very best to educate others on the source of our meats and why it is important- yeah we grew up eating it (as in our ancestors) but how did they eat it? they hunted, and raised their own. we’d value our food SO much more if we treated it with respect and knew how it was made.

We definitely eat meat in our house, and I’ll admit – I don’t always buy the grass-fed beef or free-range chicken. Ray’s parents will get meat from a local farmer in MD every once in a while, and when the City Market is open I try and get some stuff there. I could DEFINITELY be better, though. One thing I avoid 100% now is farm-raised salmon.
Eating Animals is going on my to-read list!!Be sure to check out Jess @hellotofit’s recent post: 6 Oat Recipes for Heart Health

Great post! It’s so sad how far removed our society has become in making the connection to 1.) where our food came from and how it was made, and 2.) how this food actually affects our bodies. This is a topic that I feel passionately about. I’m a vegetarian who often buys local. I just love getting produce from the farm down the street and the farmers’ market, where I’m actually talking to the growers and know where my food was made. I’ve read/watched a couple of the recommendations you make, but haven’t read Eating Animals… definitely going to now!

Hello and welcome!

I'm LAUREN, and I started Just a Pinch in 2014 when I was applying to graduate school to become a registered dietitian nutritionist. In 2017, I started my own small business, Nutrition Elevated, LLC, to help share the breadth of knowledge I learned as a nutrition graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle!